Colby Covington Claims Tyron Woodley Fight Is Still On

Colby Covington is not believing the news that he might not be fighting Tyron Woodley this year.

In case you missed the big news on Thursday morning, ESPN’s Ariel Helwani reported that the UFC is considering stripping Covington of the interim welterweight title in favor of booking the UFC welterweight champion against rising prospect Darren Till but there’s more, which is the fact that Till told MMA Fighting that he was offered the fight and Woodley turned it down but supposedly, Covington is out of the fight.

This leads us to Covington immediately clarified the situation during a recent interview on Submission Radio where he claimed that although he does need some time to recuperate from some health issues, Covington is still under the belief that his fight against Woodley will still go down later this year.

“We’re looking at doing it in November, December. You know, I need a little time off, I need to do a little recovering,” Covington said (transcript courtesy of Bloody Elbow). “I’m only human, man, I gotta get a little vacation. I just can’t keep running my body through the ground, going through training camps. You have to be strategic, and you know, November, December works for me. I had little health issues after my fight, so I’m getting those taken care of and by the year’s end I will unify my belt and retire Tyron Woodley for good.”

“I think the storyline that makes the most sense, this is the biggest fight that the UFC’s gonna make this year,” he continued. “There’s still questions regarding when Conor McGregor’s coming back, who knows when he’s coming back. They don’t know when Daniel Cormier is gonna fight again because he’s got a broken hand. So, this is the biggest fight that UFC can serve.”

“So, if you wanna serve the biggest fight between Colby ‘Chaos’ Covington and TyQuil Woodley, they need to serve it up at the world’s most iconic arena, and that’s Madison Square Garden in Manhattan New York. So, that makes the most sense for the fight.”

Covington has claimed that he can’t wait to get back inside of the Octagon to fight Woodley for the strap even before he won the interim title back at the UFC 225 pay-per-view event when he beat former UFC lightweight champ Rafael dos Anjos but if this plan doesn’t go accordingly then he has a backup plan just in case.

“If Tyron Woodley gets cold feet, which I think he will, deep down inside he knows what I used to do to him, he knows I took his soul at American Top Team,” Covington said. “So, if he gets cold feet and he backs out, then I guess the perfect storyline that make sense for the pay-per-view is I guess Toronto against that little syrup sucker Georges St-Pierre.”

“He’s been seeing aliens, he’s been doing all kinds of things. Who knows what’s going on in that guy’s head. But he has expressed interest in wanting another fight, so if TyQuil can’t come together and get his grip together to sign a contract, then I guess I’m going after GSP in Canada and I’m gonna go north of the border and I’m gonna be going and getting some poontang over there. He’s getting poutine, I’m getting poontang.”

So here’s the situation, as of this writing, these are just rumors for now considering the UFC changing their booking plans from Covington vs. Woodley to now Woodley vs. Till and until the promotion officially announces the fight, we will have to wait to find out what the real situation is.